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Well. I think x86 is dead and Intel just doesn't know it yet. Might take a decade for them to realise. Intel as a business? Maybe as a design house they will s

Well. I think x86 is dead and Intel just doesn't know it yet. Might take a decade for them to realise. Intel as a business? Maybe as a design house they will struggle to catch up. As a foundry? If they do not catch up with the amount of government support they are going to be able to claim, then there is something very wrong. Most chip designers have at least one way forward, which is to produce chips that run WASM well on Linux or a BSD. This is actually a good time for minority architectures, because a truly portable architecture is on the horizon, and everyone has an incentive to see it work; that incentive being not losing all their business to Apple, Samsung and a few Chinese firms whose names we don't recognise yet!

ohgodplsno 5y ago
>Well. I think x86 is dead and Intel just doesn't know it yet. Let me toss that in my list of sentences that will poorly age, alongside "This is the year of gaming on the linux desktop" and "surely nothing wrong will happen if I plug in this SCADA on the Internet"
- ravenstine 5y ago
  In fairness, are you not merely implying the opposite prediction? I'm sure there were people who thought pagers/beepers wouldn't instantaneously disappear from use, and there were plenty of developers who thought Java was going to be the language for the web. I'm not sure how pointing to the year of the Linux desktop is a good argument. Though I think x86/x86_64 inevitably will outlive its usefulness for general purpose computing, but it's not literally "dead". There's too many Intel architecture devices out there still. To me, it seems clear that it's more of a dead architecture walking, because I really can't think of anything that x86 does better for most use cases. I'd love to be shown wrong, though.
- unfocussed_mike 5y ago
  There was a small measure of satire/hyperbole in what I said. But you have separated that one sentence from the second sentence that provided context, so I don't think I particularly need to defend it on its own. Perhaps I should have used a semicolon to defend against you. The point was that in ten years time, I think people will look back and say: 2022 is the year x86 really ended as a forward-looking architecture. Ergo: dead, they just don't know it yet. But to expand: one of the things that is very striking about tech stuff is how quickly the energy in any one system can deflate. Looking at the Apple competition, do you think buyers will think: 1) Intel simply need to make x86 a bit better to compete, or 2) It is about time we started looking at architectures that can scale up to compete with Apple Silicon on all levels (absolute CPU power, power consumption, mobile to server) Architecturally, x86 is in serious trouble and this isn't just something I -- a random non-chip-designer -- think. It's what Intel think, or their entire recent push would not be to become a fabricator for other chip designs, built on an unhealthy amount of anti-asian supply chain FUD.
  - ohgodplsno 5y ago
    Once again, no. For the price of a Mac Pro, you get x86 hardware that performs simply better. Despite HN having a hardon for "b-b-but it's only 85W", it doesn't matter to a very large portion of users. I don't give a single crap if my workstation uses up 600W to run a 5900X and an RTX3070 (or, well, if I could find one, but shhh). I merely care about raw power. My electricity bill is a non-factor. And that's just with something of "equivalent power" (not even taking into account the fact that people don't give a shit about OSX if it doesn't run their software/games/etc). I can get some x86 hardware that runs an M1 into the ground easily, and given that all the current gen is on old processes, upcoming x86 hardware will, once again, be more than just competitive, but better. Then Apple will come out with the M2, reap all the benefits that come out of being a non-upgradable SoC with soldered RAM and soldered CPU, maybe be on top of very select benchmarks for a while, etc. As with every time that Apple came out with "revolutionary new hardware", what it mostly meant is "we slapped TSMC with a load of cash and got their latest and greatest process". So, to respond, buyers will: 1/ Not give a crap about whether it's x86 or Apple Flavored ARM (read: an ARM with undocumented extensions that is pretty much CISC), but merely look at price, in which case Apple buyers are an extreme minority. A $500 laptop with a mobile Ryzen is more than enough for the average user, and mostly, most people cannot afford a $1200+ macbook air. 2/ Not care about power consumption because it does not matter to a boatload of people. Get out of your bubble, noone outside of software developer nerds care if they have to plug in their laptop once every four hours. Most people have lunch breaks. Is it a great thing to have in a laptop ? Absolutely, and Apple has done great in that regard. Does it matter anywhere else ? Absolutely not. Once again, it's HN jerking itself off about pErFoRmaNcE pEr WaTt when Apple put out a CPU that can't even draw the 105W it's rated for, and has no proof that it can improve in single threaded performance with more power. But sure, toss out more cores, it's what x86 has been doing for years, but when Apple comes out with the M1 Ultra it's a stroke of genius to slap two of these bad boys together. 3/ People actually upgrade their hardware and don't rebuy a macbook pro every two years like half of this forum does. ARM is not a forward looking architecture, and neither is x86. They both are architectures, with their advantages and flaws (and the Apple flaws are fucking massive, unupgradable-except-if-you-buy-next-year's-version is the very definition of non-forward thinking, especially for end users).

ohgodplsno 5y ago

>Well. I think x86 is dead and Intel just doesn't know it yet. Let me toss that in my list of sentences that will poorly age, alongside "This is the year of gaming on the linux desktop" and "surely nothing wrong will happen if I plug in this SCADA on the Internet"

ravenstine 5y ago
In fairness, are you not merely implying the opposite prediction? I'm sure there were people who thought pagers/beepers wouldn't instantaneously disappear from use, and there were plenty of developers who thought Java was going to be the language for the web. I'm not sure how pointing to the year of the Linux desktop is a good argument. Though I think x86/x86_64 inevitably will outlive its usefulness for general purpose computing, but it's not literally "dead". There's too many Intel architecture devices out there still. To me, it seems clear that it's more of a dead architecture walking, because I really can't think of anything that x86 does better for most use cases. I'd love to be shown wrong, though.
unfocussed_mike 5y ago
There was a small measure of satire/hyperbole in what I said. But you have separated that one sentence from the second sentence that provided context, so I don't think I particularly need to defend it on its own. Perhaps I should have used a semicolon to defend against you. The point was that in ten years time, I think people will look back and say: 2022 is the year x86 really ended as a forward-looking architecture. Ergo: dead, they just don't know it yet. But to expand: one of the things that is very striking about tech stuff is how quickly the energy in any one system can deflate. Looking at the Apple competition, do you think buyers will think: 1) Intel simply need to make x86 a bit better to compete, or 2) It is about time we started looking at architectures that can scale up to compete with Apple Silicon on all levels (absolute CPU power, power consumption, mobile to server) Architecturally, x86 is in serious trouble and this isn't just something I -- a random non-chip-designer -- think. It's what Intel think, or their entire recent push would not be to become a fabricator for other chip designs, built on an unhealthy amount of anti-asian supply chain FUD.
- ohgodplsno 5y ago
  Once again, no. For the price of a Mac Pro, you get x86 hardware that performs simply better. Despite HN having a hardon for "b-b-but it's only 85W", it doesn't matter to a very large portion of users. I don't give a single crap if my workstation uses up 600W to run a 5900X and an RTX3070 (or, well, if I could find one, but shhh). I merely care about raw power. My electricity bill is a non-factor. And that's just with something of "equivalent power" (not even taking into account the fact that people don't give a shit about OSX if it doesn't run their software/games/etc). I can get some x86 hardware that runs an M1 into the ground easily, and given that all the current gen is on old processes, upcoming x86 hardware will, once again, be more than just competitive, but better. Then Apple will come out with the M2, reap all the benefits that come out of being a non-upgradable SoC with soldered RAM and soldered CPU, maybe be on top of very select benchmarks for a while, etc. As with every time that Apple came out with "revolutionary new hardware", what it mostly meant is "we slapped TSMC with a load of cash and got their latest and greatest process". So, to respond, buyers will: 1/ Not give a crap about whether it's x86 or Apple Flavored ARM (read: an ARM with undocumented extensions that is pretty much CISC), but merely look at price, in which case Apple buyers are an extreme minority. A $500 laptop with a mobile Ryzen is more than enough for the average user, and mostly, most people cannot afford a $1200+ macbook air. 2/ Not care about power consumption because it does not matter to a boatload of people. Get out of your bubble, noone outside of software developer nerds care if they have to plug in their laptop once every four hours. Most people have lunch breaks. Is it a great thing to have in a laptop ? Absolutely, and Apple has done great in that regard. Does it matter anywhere else ? Absolutely not. Once again, it's HN jerking itself off about pErFoRmaNcE pEr WaTt when Apple put out a CPU that can't even draw the 105W it's rated for, and has no proof that it can improve in single threaded performance with more power. But sure, toss out more cores, it's what x86 has been doing for years, but when Apple comes out with the M1 Ultra it's a stroke of genius to slap two of these bad boys together. 3/ People actually upgrade their hardware and don't rebuy a macbook pro every two years like half of this forum does. ARM is not a forward looking architecture, and neither is x86. They both are architectures, with their advantages and flaws (and the Apple flaws are fucking massive, unupgradable-except-if-you-buy-next-year's-version is the very definition of non-forward thinking, especially for end users).